Re-enactors enter the Fort Caroline Monument during the Sail Jacksonville celebration on June 10, 2004. A variety of activities are planned to celebrate the fort's 450th anniversary, despite recent doubts over the exact location of the original fort.

Various groups are planning parties, staging exhibits and even putting on a rock opera to mark next month’s 450th anniversary of the French founding of Fort Caroline in Jacksonville.

So what if no one’s ever figured out exactly where the ill-fated colony was in Jacksonville.

So what if two competing theories, released on the eve of the 450th, say that’s because the fort wasn’t even in Jacksonville?

No one’s going to let any of that spoil the party for Fort Caroline’s sesquiquadricentennial.

That group is helping to set up a party in November at the Fort Caroline National Memorial.

Anderson is among the many who still believe the sesquiquadricentennial is happening in the right place.

But he’s tickled by the furor over the competing theories, which if somehow proven would radically upset the long-established history of Jacksonville.

“In fact, I love it. I just want people to talk about it, look into it, scratch their heads about it,” Anderson said.

Barbara Goodman is fine with the alternate theories too. “No, we’re not gloomy about it at all,” she said.

She is superintendent of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, a national park that includes the Fort Caroline memorial and a replica fort. And if the mystery fort one day proves to be far away from the national park?

“We’d find that exciting as well,” she said.

In February, the University of Florida’s Anita Spring and scholar Fletcher Crowe said they believe the fort is actually up in Georgia, near Darien.

In April, Brunswick, Ga., archaeologists Fred Cook and Bill Weeks put the fort back in Florida — barely. They believe it’s on the Florida side of the St. Marys River, which divides Florida and Georgia.

Researchers have been scouring old maps and writings to try to figure out the location of the mystery fort.

In Jacksonville, in the part of town named after the fort, archaeologists have dug extensively but have no evidence of it.

With all that work, no one can say conclusively where French protestants settled on June 22, 1564, only to be wiped out the next year by the Spanish.

But the University of North Florida’s Keith Ashley and Robert “Buzz” Thunen, archaeologists who have searched for the fort for years, have said they still firmly believes it’s in Jacksonville — though perhaps under what is now marshes.

Other archaeologists in the area have also reaffirmed that, saying the historical record is just too strong to suggest otherwise.

So Goodman, the park superintendent, is confident that the real Fort Caroline is somewhere close by.

“We are still comfortable with the history as we present it,” she said. “We believe that it’s somewhere in Jacksonville.”

The Museum of Science and History is playing a large role in the anniversary.

It is now exhibiting digital reproductions of engravings by Theodore de Bry, long thought to depict the settlement at Fort Caroline. De Bry, who never left Europe, published his work in 1591, saying he based it on drawings by a French artist who was at Fort Caroline. That claim, however, has in recent years been met by skepticism.

So MOSH is also showing a collection of new paintings, based on de Bry’s work, that tries to show what life there might have looked like. They incorporate actual Florida landscapes and modern scholarship, unlike de Bry’s fanciful work.

On Thursday, Ashley, the UNF archaeologist, will speak at MOSH on the lives of the Native Americans the French and Spanish would encounter in the 16th century.

On June 21, the museum will host digitally animated short film based on the de Bry engravings. John de Bry, an archaeologist and descendant of the artist, will speak.

On June 30, the Jacksonville Historical Society will display relics from the lost French fleet inside City Hall, among other things. There’s also a party to mark the 450th anniversary at Orsay, a French restaurant.

In October, a full-scale production of “La Caroline” will be presented at MOSH. It’s a rock opera, inspired by the fort’s story, written by Jennifer Chase and John E. Citrone.

Fundraising efforts are underway to send the cast and director to Nantes, France, a sister city of Jacksonville.

In November, the French ambassador to the U.S. is expected to attend a party at the Fort Caroline Monument, said Joanelle Mulrain, one of the organizers of the event. She said French ships might also arrive at the fort on that day, too.

That would harken back to the French arrival 450 years ago at Fort Caroline. Or the St. Marys River. Or the Altamaha.

“Somewhere at some point we’re going to find that thing, and that’ll settle it all,” Mulrain said.

What’s certain is that, on its sesquiquadricentennial, the fort is still a hot topic.

Emily Lisska of the Jacksonville Historical Society was at the state historical society’s meeting Friday in Fort Lauderdale. One well-attended event that day was presentation on the alternate Fort Caroline theories. It sparked what she called a spirited but “very gentlemanly” discussion on the mystery.

“Whatever the outcome, La Caroline is a wonderful story,” she said. “And it’s almost impossible it’s not our story.”

Fort Caroline National Memorial was established in 1953 by an Act of Congress to properly memorialize the French presence on Saint Johns Bluff, Florida. In 1957 the visitor center opened on a part-time basis. The park visitor center opened full-time in 1958. The fort "model" opened to the public on the 400th anniversary of the colony's founding. The Memorial became the administrative center of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in February 1988.

The National Park Service needs to change the name of the national memorial back to that of the original French - the Fort de la Caroline (National Memorial) for the same reason it changed the name of the Spanish fort in St. Augustine back to its original name of the Castillo de San Marcos (National Monument)in 1942 - to properly reflect the name given to each site by its European founders. Too often, visitors to Fort Caroline National Memorial believe the site to be associated with the American Civil War or the British period in Florida. There was no female named "Caroline" associated with the French colony!

Also, interesting to note that the reenactors depicted in the article about the French site are wearing clothing associated with the American Revolution period which occurred 200 years after the founding of la Caroline.

When you think about the hardships and difficult logistical challenges that would have faced the Spanish troops in 1565 if they were to have marched from St. Augustine to a Fort Caroline located the Altamaha River in Georgia as some researchers believe, instead of an attack on a Fort Caroline located on the St. Johns River, the notion that the fort could be in Georgia is ridiculous. This is especially true when we know that it took only two days for the Spanish troops to make the journey. Even if, as those same researchers theorize, the attack originated from a Spanish outpost on the St. Marys River instead of from St. Augustine, the march across numerous streams, swamps, and woodlands in south Georgia would have taken much longer than two days.